The authors have undoubtedly
made a considerable contribution to the sociology of scientific research; in
this book, however, they are also writing as philosophers, particularly in the
chapters "The Construction of a Fact: the Case of TRF(H)" (pp. 105‑150)
and "The Microprocessing of Facts" (pp. 151‑186).

On p. 187 they write: 'Similarly
in the last chapter we attempted to examine the operation of microprocesses
without committing ourselves to either a realist or relativist position.'

On p. 178 they explicitly reject
the realist philosophy that physical reality exists independently of our act
of knowing. They do indeed try to avoid relativism, but they cannot avoid choosing
between philosophical realism and idealism.

A serious omission in the bibliography
of Latour and Woolgar, to my mind, is Lenin's 'Materialism and Empiriocriticism'.
Had they read this work, they would have been aware of the principal arguments
against positions as those they adopt and could have prepared to refute them.
It is now only possible to guess at what their answers to Lenin's objections
would be.

We need a consistent philosophy
which can serve as a foundation of science. If we neglect various forms
of objective idealism, we are left with only one consistent form
of idealism: solipsism. But since the essential pursuit of science is socially
accepted knowledge, and a solipsist denies or considers unproved the existence
of any consciousness except his own, solipsism is useless as a foundation for
science.

Latour and Woolgar are not solipsists.
On pp. 168‑171 they even state that, in a laboratory the development of
scientific ideas is so much the result of continual interaction between scientists,
that it is often difficult to tell who originated an idea. As the title of the
book indicates, they are telling us that scientific facts are socially constructed,
and that scientific knowledge exists by virtue of the consensus of scientists.
What this amounts to is that an epistemology that can serve as a foundation
for science is not required to guarantee the existence of a physical reality
independent of our observation, but only the existence of other observers.

The fact that nobody is either
such an ubiquitous observer, that he can procure all the data on his own or
a thinker of such genius, that he alone can construct all the theories needed
to account for the data, so that science can only develop by the collaboration
of several scientists, is not at issue. What is at issue is whether, if one
denies or considers unproved the physical reality of individual observations,
one can base a philosophy of science on the correspondence between the observations
of several observers.

The first and most important
objection to a non‑realistic philosophy of science is the impossibility
of consistently escaping solipsism. This is evident, as soon as we ask ourselves,
how it is that we know that there are other people and what they think and observe.
The answer is: by observation. I know that there are other people because I
see or hear them. I know what they think or observe, because I hear what they
say or read what they write.

So if I consider it unproved
that all observations reflect a reality outside the observer, I must also consider
the physical reality of the observations by which I see my fellowmen and hear
what they say or read what they write as unproved. Then there is no means by
which I can know whether there are other people, and if there are, what they
think or observe; and so I have arrived at solipsism.

Latour and Woolgar think that
they have proved what they call constructivistic epistemology by analysing the
scientific research process down to its smallest constituents. But these smallest
constituents are readings of instruments and discussions of scientists. If Latour
and Woolgar were consistent in their constructivistic epistemology, they would
also apply it to their own discussions with scientists. Then a sentence spoken
by one of the scientists would have to be socially constructed too, i. e. in
order to ascertain that a scientist had actually said what he had said Latour
(who did the field work for the research) would have had to ascertain that others
had heard the same thing as he and would have had to ask other persons present
what they heard, etc., and so, if such a way of working could be maintained
and had not exhausted the patience of his interlocutors, he would have
become involved in an infinite regress. Actually, of course, like any normal
person carrying on a conversation, he assumed that, because he had good ears
and his interlocutor spoke intelligibly, his interlocutor had actually said
what he heard, in other words he considered the words of his interlocutors as
a philosophical realist. That is just the pitfall for the opponents of epistemological
realism: epistemological realism is so natural for most people, that even the
philosophers opposing it theoretically apply it often nonetheless in practice
thinking and so become involved in internal contradictions.

A second difficulty for a non‑realistic
epistemology is the question of the existence of the world before the appearance
of mankind. According to the precepts of science, the earth, the sun, the stars
existed long before mankind. But according to the constructivistic epistemology
of Latour and Woolgar, scientific truth is socially constructed by men and women.
There have been several attempts to reconcile the existence of the world before
the human race with an idealistic or constructivistic epistemology, but they
have all turned out to be unsatisfactory. (See Lenin, pp. 59‑70.)

A third difficulty for a non‑realistic
epistemology is the difference between changes in the world and changes in our
knowledge of the world. "Knowledge may change without objects and objects
change without knowledge." (Bhaskar, p. 250).

On p. 178 Latour and Woolgar
argue that they cannot see in the distinction between physical reality and our
representation of it much more than a useless doubling of reality. An omniscient
being such as a god could indeed equate his thoughts with physical reality.
But we human beings know nature only imperfectly and so we are forced to distinguish
between the world and our knowledge of it. The extent of Latour and Woolgar's
difficulties in the philosophy of science is not yet fully apparent in a science
like neuro‑endocrinology-‑the area of research of the laboratory
they studied--engaged in studying the timeless laws of nature. The formula "TRF=Pyro‑Glu‑His-Pro‑NH2"
has been valid according to the realistic epistemology anyhow since the time
immemorial when in the evolution of the animals TRF developed in their brains
(the determination of that moment would be a completely separate and probably
far more difficult research program, which in any case was not an area of concern
for them). In the case of such timeless truths only one time parameter is important:
the time of their discovery; and the absurdities due to identifying the moment
of their discovery with their first moment of being can only be clouded over
for a short time. But even here there are difficulties as soon as we consider
individual events that have occurred before the discovery of particular natural
laws. "Ancient parchment rolls were eroded by oxygen in the air" is
also said, if those parchment rolls were eroded before Lavoisier discovered
oxygen in 1777‑1783 (the discovery of oxygen is epistemologically completely
analogous to the discovery of TRF discussed by Latour and Woolgar). From this
it is apparent that scientists and the man in the street assume that physical
things also exist before their discovery.

The difficulties of the constructivistic
epistemology become still greater in cases in which the described part of nature
changes across time. For example the statement 'Before 1846 it was not known
that the planet Neptune existed' can definitely not be paraphrased as 'Before
1846 the planet Neptune did not exist' and if someone calculates the orbit of
Neptune in the past according to Newton's laws (which have to be replaced by
Einstein's relativity theory according to the present state of science), (s)he
does not stop at the moment that Neptune was discovered.

In order to explain such phenomena
Latour and Woolgar have devised 'splitting' and 'inversion'. 'At the same time,
the past becomes inverted. TRF has been there all along, just waiting to be
revealed for all to see' (p. 177). It is almost like Orwell's '1984', in which
the state repeatedly changes the representation of the past in order to bring
it into agreement with the requirements of present politics. Such are the absurdities
of an epistemology that confuses our representation of the things with the things
themselves!

A fourth reason for distinguishing
the world from our representations of it is that especially in natural science
the sequential order of the underlying bases in nature is almost systematically
opposite to the order in which we are aware of their existence and also usually
opposite to the order in which they were discovered. See Bhaskar, p. 169.

Against this Latour and Woolgar
adduce the difficulties which relativity theory and quantum mechanics present
for a realistic epistemology. 'In addition, he (Bhaskar in 'A Realist Theory
of Science') wisely confines his discussion to physics, and to pre-Newtonian
physics at that. Perhaps the 'independence' of 'intransitive objects of scientific
knowledge' would seem less unproblematic in relation to more recently constructed
phenomena such as chromosomes or non‑Newtonian physics' (p. 178). But
they describe Bhaskar's argumentation completely incorrectly. Actually Bhaskar
does treat relativity theory (p. 34, 155, "There is a similar break involved
in the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian dynamics') and quantum mechanics
(p. 109: 'Quantum mechanics strengthens the anti‑determinist's hand')
and also treats the quite specific methodological problems of sciences in which
experiments are not performable at all (sociology) or only with a far less complete
control of the variables than in the natural sciences (psychology, pp. 244‑246).

The theory of relativity produces,
if it is well understood, no difficulties for a realistic epistemology. The
term “theory of relativity" is a somewhat misleading term, but it has been
so generally accepted that it is probably not possible to replace it. Still
in order to describe the character of the theory of relativity some people have
proposed the name "invariant theory", the doctrine of the relations
invariant to the location and the acceleration of the observer. It is, by no
means, a consequence of "invariant theory" that the meaning of all
physical statements is relative to the observer. But it does require a drastic
revision of the physical conceptual systems of classical physics, so that among
other changes separate space and time have to be replaced by a four‑dimensional
space-time continuum, but that in this revised conceptual system the relations
among events can be formulated without reference to a definite observer, that
the so‑called interval between two events is invariant to the observer's
location and acceleration.

Einstein himself never explained
his philosophical ideas in great detail, but he did describe his epistemological
realism on several occasions, most nuancedly on p. 684: "He (the scientist)
therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous
opportunist: he appears as a realist insofar as he seeks to describe
a world independent of the acts of perception; as an idealist insofar
as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human
spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as a positivist
insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the
extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory
experiences. He may even appear as a Platonist or Pythagorean
insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable
and effective tool of research."

For a realistic epistemology quantum mechanics presents more
difficulties. The deepest cause of the counter‑intuitive character of
many phenomena in quantum mechanics is, that no observation that does not disturb
the object observed is possible, and so we do not observe the micro‑object
as it was before the observation but as it is modified by the observation. Much
has been written about the philosophy of quantum mechanics and a more detailed
treatment would lead us too far astray. Yet I have to point out, that the general
philosophical objections to an idealist epistemology also hold for quantum mechanics
(consistently pursued it renders all communication among scientists impossible;
the transition of electrons from one orbit to another in atoms (typically one
of the phenomena in the domain of quantum mechanics) must also have occurred
innumerable times without someone's observing them, and the adoption of an idealistic
epistemology in all natural sciences except quantum mechanics only raises more
problems than it solves. It may be a solution to combine a realistic epistemology
for the macroworld that includes interactions between people and a philosophy
of bipolar interconnectedness between the observer and the object for quantum
mechanics.

A second argument of Latour
and Woolgar against realistic epistemology is the great and prolonged effort
often needed to reveal the truth about a certain topic, and the many contrary
opinions often pronounced before the definitive solution of a problem. They
give the example of the determination of the formula of TRF, which they had
been able to observe in their laboratory, and which eventually appeared to be
Pyro‑Glu‑His‑Pro‑NH2. But this only confirms Bhaskar's
observation on p. 169, that the layers of material reality most difficult to
find, which are found last, are usually the most fundamental in the causal order
of the dependency of being.

On p. 186 the authors offer
a third argument for their constructivistic epistemology: 'Many of the substances
(and their analogues) mentioned in earlier chapters are patented. Substances
'discovered' in the laboratory are described in the texts of patents as having
been 'invented'. This shows that the ontological status is rarely likely to
be finally settled: depending on the prevailing interests of the parties concerned,
the 'same' substance can be given a new status'. But the fact that a laboratory
was granted a patent for, a chemical substance by no means proves that the distinction
between discovering something and making something is doubtful, but only that
a minor conceptual clarification is necessary. If one Means by TRF 'chemically
pure TRF', then of course it did not exist before it was made in the laboratory.
If one means by TRF TRF molecules, mixed with other molecules or not', then
of course TRF has existed for a long time in the brains of innumerable organisms
before it was ever isolated in the laboratory. It does not clash with a realistic
epistemology that in some cases scientists actually make things and not merely
discover them. For example an epistemological realist also says that Kamerlingh
Onnes made fluid helium and did not discover it, and that MacMillan and Seaborg
made plutonium and did not discover it.

Conclusion: in spite of the merits of this book as a sociological
study of a laboratory its plea for the replacement of a realistic by a constructivistic
epistemology is not convincing*.